Wausau, WI - The McIndoe House

(click here to read previous story: From Nahant to Wausau)

In the Spring of 1942, just a few short months after Pearl Harbor, my 10-year-old grandfather and his family moved 1,200 miles from Nahant, MA to Wausau, WI.

His parents, my great-grandparents Ralph and Babe, had taken on a lot more responsibility in the 12 years since their 1930 marriage.  Not only did they now have three young children, they had also recently taken in Babe's elderly widowed mother.

“My grandfather [Earl] fell from the corn crib and broke several ribs (I can’t remember if anything else was broken), and he lingered for quite a while and then finally died," said my grandfather Dinon.  "I was probably seven or eight years old when he died ... And after  that we had the funeral, and they had an auction and they sold everything in the farm [in Illinois] and the farm itself ... Then Grandma Henness came to live with us after that."

In her old age, Grandma Henness had developed rheumatoid arthritis and the knuckles of her hands were swollen and painful.  But she did what she could to help out around the house, especially in the kitchen.

“She was the one who would bake the bread, almost every day.  And I took it on myself to get her to forget to take the bread out of the oven because I liked the crust nice and dark brown (and she liked it light brown)," Dinon said, chuckling.  "So I would try and do everything I could to get her attention away from the bread for a while so that it would get darker.  I don’t think we ever burned it, but sometimes I’d get my way and it would be cooked a little longer.  I enjoyed that, let me tell you."

727 McIndoe Street, Wausau, WI
(Present day: Google Maps Street View)

Initially, the Boyer family rented a home in Wausau, just east of the Wisconsin River and near the train station.  Shortly after their arrival, Ralph purchased a house for the family just a block-and-a-half away.

"Now that was some house in Wausau," my grandfather said.

The house, 727 McIndoe (MACK-in-doe), was a big white house three stories tall.  Its face was ornamented by two big bushes and four huge pillars, and it came with a four-car garage.  It even had a back stairway and a perfect patch of dirt for my grandfather to play war games with his toy planes and a few firecrackers.

Babe and Ralph (and infant Glenda) stayed in the second-story bedroom at the front of the house, which included a small balcony over the porch; Dinon and his brother Darryl shared a second-story room at the east corner of the back of the house; and Grandma Henness had the third floor (minus the storage space) all to herself, including a bathroom.

“She liked being up on the third floor," Dinon said.  “I can’t remember when Grandma died, but she lived with us for a long long time.”

The house was so big that it even had a room just for the kids and their toys.

"I remember there was one room designated as the playroom, and I had a Lionel train set that I played with," Dinon said.  "It had a big loop, two switches, and a smaller loop inside.  And I would play with the blocks, and make tunnels and different things."

A photo of my young grandfather and his toys,
including the blocks his Grandpa Henness made

The blocks he played with had been handmade years ago by his Grandpa Earl Henness for Babe (Dinon's mother), the only child in her family.  Earl also made a large toy box for Babe, and both the box and the blocks were passed down to her firstborn, my grandfather.  Today, that box is sitting against the wall of his family room, and inside are the same wooden blocks from this photo.  Though still sturdy, they are chipped, dented and stained by four generations of children's play.

Since there was a playroom for the boys, Dinon and Darryl's bedroom was small and practical.

"We had a bed on each wall and an aisle in between," Dinon said.  "We did have a bureau, which we had to share, so each of us had a small drawer at the top on each side, and one big drawer, so we didn't have a lot of clothes.  In the summertime, that wasn't so bad.”

And the boys were responsible for keeping their room tidy.

“When I was a kid, I always made my bed before I went down for breakfast, it was just part of the routine.  And you didn't waste any time, particularly in the winter, getting dressed," said Dinon.  "My parents believed that you needed fresh air when you slept, therefore the storm window was always raised four to six inches.  And if it snowed, you might have a little skiff of snow right on the window ledge.  So, I’ll tell ya, when you got up in the morning, you wasted no time, you got dressed and got your bed made and got of your room and into something warm.”

The Boyer family lived in the McIndoe house until 1946, and my grandfather's middle school years played out in Wausau, including his first job, deaf classmates, and two rounds of scarlet fever.

(Next story: Wausau, WI - Middle School in the Midwest)

SIMILAR STORIES

Nahant to
Wausau

Nahant
 MA

Pittsfield
MA

Nahant, MA

(click here to read previous story: Pittsfield, MA)

In 1930, Ralph and his new bride, Babe, moved to Pittsfield, Massachusetts so that Ralph could begin his new job as a chemical engineer for General Electric's plastic division.

In 1936, my great-grandfather Ralph was transferred to General Electric's plant in Lynn.  So he picked up his pregnant wife and preschool son, Dinon, and moved from the west end of Massachusetts all the way to the tiny peninsula of Nahant on the seaboard side.

The 1936 move, 120+ miles from Pittsfield to Nahant

Nahant: A single square mile peninsula of land

Since my grandfather, Dinon, lived here for 6 years between the ages of 5 and 11 (1936-1942), he remembers Nahant better than Pittsfield.

“In Nahant, it was a regular town, because they had a town hall, a library, and they had a few small stores," Dinon said.  "I remember there was one store that I passed all the time that was run by a Jewish man that had candy.  So I would rob my globe bank and buy some candy on the way home ... I would probably buy licorice.  I don’t remember them having red licorice or any other color, if you got licorice it was just black.  Some of the licorice they made into the shape of a pipe.”

“In the house we lived in, I could see the ocean two different directions from my bedroom - you could look out it at a forty-five degree angle and see it one direction, and at forty-five the other way and see the ocean, and of course when I lived there I thought it was great, I loved living there.  I loved it," Dinon said.  "When we had a storm, dad would take us down closer to some place we could watch the waves come in and splash against the rocks, and watch the foam go waaaay up in the air.  I mean, way way up.  I thought that was really great."

"Big tree after Sept. 1938 Hurricane"
(source)

In September of 1938, the Great New England Hurricane blew by - and was just another adventure for a happy seven-year-old boy.

"My dad was out of town on business, and he tried to get back but he couldn't, the storm was so bad.   We lost power and it was dark, so Mother had to light some candles," Dinon recalled.  "The next day, a lot of the big trees were lying down, and of course the roots were vertical because they just toppled over.  Well, gee, going to school you either went over the tree or around it, and I thought, 'Well, this is great fun!'"

"I remember my father had arranged for one of our neighbors from Pittsfield, the Gigerichs, to come and have a fishing trip.  This was just after the hurricane.  I remember we went on this boat, and the ocean had swells that go way up, and way way down, and way way up, and way way down," my grandfather said, chuckling and waving his hands to illustrate.  "Everybody on that boat got seasick except me and their daughter, Judy, who was about my age."

Since it took a while for his baby brother, Daryll, to get big enough to play with, it was common for Dinon to run around the island on his own.  One spot that he liked was the mile-long causeway that connected Nahant to the mainland.

Old Postcard of Castle Rock and Egg Rock
(source)

"On one side, it had this beautiful white sand beach. I never went down to just lay on the beach – I wasn't really that crazy about sand, y'know, walking in the sand, getting it between my toes and all that, but I liked to climb on the rocks," Dinon said.  "On the other side of the road, there were these HUGE rocks; I don’t where they quarried these, but they were MONSTROUS, huge.  And they just dumped them there, they didn't try to build a wall or anything with mortar and all that kind of stuff, they just dumped them to help hold the causeway.  But these big rocks really fascinated me.  Since they were dumped there willy-nilly, why, there were lots of crevices that you could crawl around through, and so, by myself, when I was six or seven years old, I would crawl through the crevices these rocks had in them, until one day I darn near got stuck at the bottom, and I panicked.  I got out, obviously, but I never went back."

And sometimes he would even hitchhike (a common way to travel in that time) over the causeway to Lynn, the town where his father worked.

"I was really a bad boy," my grandfather said, folding his hands and shaking his head.  "Most people do not know that I would hitchhike into Lynn and would shoplift from some of the drugstores – take a flashlight, or something, nothing very big."

As he told this story, he was sitting in the neatly-maintained home that he purchased 40+ years ago with his life-long wife, the same house that they raised their four children in.  Even now, in his eighties, he continues to landscape his yard, fix his gutters, pay his taxes, and go to church every Sunday.  In that living room, the thought of my grandfather shoplifting at any age was stupefying.

Old Postcard of Bass Point Beach in Nahant
(source)

"One day, the police came to the door at my home," Dinon said.  "Well, I denied it, I flat-out denied that I had anything to do with it, because there was another kid that was doing the same thing.  We stashed our ‘loot’ in some abandoned building … I guess we did it because it was something to do.  After the policeman came to the door, I just quit, I mean, that was it, baby!  I wasn't taking any more chances, I didn't want to be a crook!  But there was a short time in there that it was more fun than anything else, that I was doing it and not getting caught, but I came very close!"

He chuckled, embarrassed.

"I don’t have any clue as to why they came to the door, because this was early evening when the policeman showed up.  So, my guess now is that they caught the other kid and he ratted me out, that’s the only thing I can think of.  But it was a time, and I was glad to finally get back on the 'straight and narrow', I guess," he said.  "I don't think my parents ever found out.  I told [your grandmother] Liz, but very few people know that I did that, and I don’t even think any of my kids know.  But you know, as a kid, you do some dumb things – you get in the wrong crowd, or, whatever, and veer off the 'straight and narrow'."

From then on, he stuck to fun within the law, like Kick the Can and chewing tar.

"Some of the streets were paved," he said, and held up his hand, making a quarter-sized circle with his thumb and forefinger. "We liked to get a chunk of tar and chew it.  It would be the 'pure' tar that they used on the road, and in the summertime it would sometimes bubble up, and so the kids oftentimes would get some of it and chew it."

Another favorite treat was ice chips. 

Their home in Pittsfield didn't have an ice box (Dinon's mother, Babe, would keep the butter on the outside window ledge during the winter), but here in Nahant was a different story.

"In Nahant, my mother had a refrigerator that used ice, and I always used to like to see the ice man come around in the wagon – I think it was a little truck – and we always tried to get the ice chips from the ice man," Dinon said.  "When the ice man would come around, I always went to the back of the truck to try to get the little ice chips, because he’s got a big block of ice and he’d chop off a block to take in, and he had these big tongs, and he’d carry it in and put it in the fridge."

At the Nahant home, in the
sailor suit his mother made

According to family stories, his mother, Babe, was a gold standard for the housewife.  She stayed home with the kids, was a famously good cook, and was great at making clothes for all the family members.

"My mother was an excellent seamstress, I mean, she could make my dad’s dress shirts, and everything," he said.  “There was a sailor suit that my mother made for me when I was in Nahant.  And, boy, I was proud of that.   She made that sailor suit, and with the jacket I looked really sharp … I had these nice big brass buttons on it, and I was so proud of that, golly!  And I would guess that that would probably be right at the beginning of when the war started … I don’t know for sure, but that’s what I would guess.” 

But even the happiest childhood in the 1930s couldn't wholly avoid the effects of a brewing world war, especially when it was lived on a vulnerable spit of peninsula on the eastern seaboard.

(Next story: Nahant, MA: Wartime)

SIMILAR STORIES

Pittsfield
MA

Nahant, MA
Wartime

Special
K Loaf

Pittsfield, MA

One thing I have learned to never under-estimate is the power of old family photos.  The emotional impact, and story-telling power, of a single photo is always incredible to me, even when the photos are of another person's family. So imagine how hard it was for me to breathe when one Saturday, in the middle of interviewing my 80-year-old grandfather, Dinon, he pulled out a photo album arranged by his mother.  

November 1931: Alma
and infant son Dinon

I felt my heart stop as I pulled back the cover to find black pages neatly arranged with photos and handwritten captions of my great-grandparents' courtship, wedding, honeymoon, and early marriage.  Even though I had the chance to meet both of my great-grandparents before they passed, Ralph and Alma (better known as "Babe") are little more to me than faint childhood recollections of a stoop-shouldered man and a tiny wrinkled woman.  But in the pages of that photo album I got to glimpse them at a time when they were my age, young and newly married.  In these photos, my great-grandfather's shoulders were straight and strong, and my great-grandmother was once an absolute knock-out.

According to notes in Babe's neat handwriting, she met my great-grandfather, Ralph Boyer, in their home state of Illinois on October 26th, 1927.  They were engaged the following August, and were then married in August of 1930 after Ralph graduated from the University of Wisconsin with his master's degree in Chemical Engineering.  Shortly after, he and Alma moved to Pittsfield, MA, a city 100 miles west of Boston, where he worked for General Electric in their plastics department.

Spring of 1932:
Ralph, Babe and Dinon

Their firstborn child was my grandfather, Dinon.  He was born on October 26, 1931 in Pittsfield.  He ended up as a belated birthday present, born the day after his mother's 23rd birthday.

The small Boyer family first lived in an apartment as they got on their feet, Ralph working as an engineer and Alma staying home with the baby.  "My mother remembers putting butter out on the window ledge in wintertime, because I’m not sure if they had a refrigerator at that time,” my grandfather said.

Dinon enjoyed a few years as the only child - his famously-pragmatic parents waited 5 years before their second child, and another 5 years after that before their third, so that they would only have to pay for one child's college tuition at a time.

In their defense, there were plenty of reasons why the pair was so frugal, even though Ralph was well-employed.  After all, both were born on farms in Illinois, and Babe's childhood farmhouse had a dirt floor.  And the economic climate of that era was far from comforting.

"You gotta remember, this was during the Depression, and although my dad always had a job there were a number of times that he took a pay cut," Dinon said.  "He graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1930, so he was very fortunate that General Electric hired him.  The start of the Depression was 1929, so in 1930 it was tough.  And then I was born in 1931."

Whatever financial stresses his parents might've endured, my grandfather's memories of his childhood, even his very earliest ones, are of being happy, loved and provided for.

Before Dinon's first birthday, Babe and Ralph bought a new dining room table, the same table that Dinon inherited and later raised his own children around.

"My parents told me that one time I crawled under the table, and got balanced on my tummy so that I couldn't go forward or backward, I was just there," Dinon recounted, chuckling.  "There’s a piece in the middle under there, so, as a baby, I just crawled up in there, and I was stuck, and all I could do was cry.  I mean, I was just, there, couldn’t go forward, couldn’t go backward, I could flail my arms and all, but there was nothing that touching!  So I was rescued, y’know.”

He also remembers playing under the huge rhubarb leaves of his neighbor's victory garden behind their garage, and even attempting to ice skate before his fifth birthday.

“Of course, as a kid, I ice skated," Dinon said.  "I seem to remember doing some ice skating when I lived in Pittsfield ... It was kind of on a little stream.  The ice was curved, it was low in the middle and came up on both sides, which made it a little hard to skate.  And, of course, my skates were not the professional kind, and therefore, my ankles were not strong enough to stay up, so they kept going out.  So it was hard to skate that way.  I can still picture that stream in my mind.”

Even his minor pre-school surgeries are remembered by my grandfather mostly for the pleasant memories of the healing. 

“I had my tonsils out when I was very young, I don’t know what age, but I still remember, after having the tonsils out, wanting to suck chipped ice," Dinon said.  "And I had operations on both of my big toes [because I had ingrown toenails], and ... after the operation on my toes, I had them both wrapped, and my parents put me in a wagon.  I was very young, I think it was before I was in school, but it was in the summertime evidently because while I was healing, why they put me in a wagon and took me to where I could watch some houses being built.”

Around the time that Dinon turned 5 - and also close to the time that his brother, Daryll, was born - his father, Ralph, was transferred from the General Electric plant in Pittsfield to their plant in Lynn, MA, right on the Atlantic coast.  So, around 1936, the small Boyer family picked up and moved just east of Lynn, in a town on a tiny chicken-necked peninsula called Nahant.

(next story: Nahant, MA)

SIMILAR STORIES

Nahant
MA

Nahant, MA
Wartime

Special
K Loaf